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Thursday, August 31, 2006

Good news on the organ transplantion front

Today at midnight new regulations will come into effect in the UK. On current estimates they will prevent approximately 1200 unnecessary deaths p/a. Under the current regime relatives of a deceased person can prevent the NHS from utilising the deceased's organs for transplantation purposes. This results every year into what I would call unnecessary deaths of people on transplant waiting lists who are unable to access life-preserving donor organs in time. Under the new regime the relatives won't be able to stop this process. In other words, the state assumes as of midnight today that a deceased person would want to preserve a fellow citizen's life by means of permitting her organs to be utilised for transplantation purposes. Anyone objecting to this can carry on him a note saying that in case of death he would not wish to see his organs utilised in such a manner. The result of this policy changes is estimated to prevent 1200 premature deaths per year.Good news indeed.